The Pooh Perplex is a composition of many perplexing fictional authors all critiquing the stories in Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne. Three of the essays, “Poisoned Paradise,” “Another Book to Cross Off Your List,” and “A. A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex,” are very similar and will be compared and contrasted in critical school, authorial tone, subject of concentration, and validity.

“Poisoned Paradise: The Underside of Pooh” is a good example of an over-reacting paranoid father who reads into things too much. Myron Masterson, the author, tries to give an educated yet poorly evidenced analysis in the style of a mix of schools such as Freudian, New Criticism, and Archetypal. He expresses all this in a tone of a sexually paranoid father hiding behind a legitimate “career” in finding all the base meanings behind words within texts. There are several topics of interest within the essay such as Christopher Robin’s obvious “neurotic effort to transfer onto one’s furry dolls all the grievances and secret fantasies that characterize the onset of the latency period” (44) and the “loss of his mother” (45). Masterson goes on to prove these “fantasies” in that the sexless Pooh and Piglet are continually seeking the comfort of Christopher Robin and Tigger’s “bouncing” of Roo (50). The loss of his mother is evidenced by the fact that there are no adult figures in Pooh-land and there is an obvious disruption of paradise in the appearance of the “archetypal mawkish ‘mom’-figure” Kanga (44). Masterson doesn’t go into too much detail or evidence of either of these subjects, giving one or two examples of them. The majority of examples he did supply did not ring all that true to support his claims. The “latency period” that Christopher Robin is going through could be a rebellion against parental figures in his life as a way of denying the fact he is growing up, but doubtful it is because he is getting over a sexual infatuation of his mother or because of any sexual reason at all. However, even though most of Masterson’s ideas are exaggerations on his own paranoia, his ideas are the most convincing and understandable of all three essays.

Simon Lacerous, author of “Another Book to Cross Off Your List,” is the most ludicrous author of all three essays. There is no real critical approach that the author follows, it can only be described as an attack on others who have critiqued Winnie-The-Pooh in attempt to discredit their findings, with a hint of Marxism and moralist mixed in. Lacerous has a tone that is condescending, egotistic, and is intended to cut everyone and everything down. The majority of the essay is a rampage against other authors and an attempt to establish himself, and his wife, as the only people who are true critics. When Winnie-The-Pooh is analyzed it is found that it is a “vast betrayal of Life” and defunct of moral seriousness (103). Life is betrayed because there is no working class, no coal mines or hardships upon the little people, only pleasant, easy-going, slothful animals. He also believes that the stories are not “lifelike” in that stupid Pooh is always right, Tigger and Eeyore, true “lifelike” characters who “lash out at injustice,” are “frowned upon” and insulted, and nobody seems to worry about getting hurt, such as Roo drowning when he falls into the river (107). Lacerous also believes that the same examples given above, represent a lack of moral seriousness and believes Christopher Robin to be a snot-nosed, spoiled-brat who’s father, Milne, is trying to steer away from playland to start growing up, to which Lacerous believes is about time. As many examples that Lacerous gives in his essay, none of them definatly prove that the stories of Winnie-The-Pooh are a betrayal to life or lacking in sufficient morals, and of the three essays his are least influential, partly because of his condescending attitude and desire to strike back and cut down other’s critiques of the same book.

The third essay, “A. A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex,” is both very similar and very unlike the previous two essays. It is strictly written in the Freudian School / Psychological Approach and concerns only the “problems” of A. A. Milne himself. According to the author, Karl Anschauung, A. A. Milne “must be regarded as a Narcissist regrettably unable to overcome regressive tendencies fixating his libido at pre-Oedipal cathexes, and hence [also] seeking in masturbatory phantasy-play an outletting of repressed materials which he upon the unsuspecting public wishes to impose in the secondarily elaborated form of ‘art’” (126). That is quite a first impression since that is what we must conclude just from reading the “introduction” of Winnie-The-Pooh. Then, at the end of the essay he adds on more problems such as “advanced animal-phobia ... anal-sadistic and oral-helpful phantasies, skoptophilia and secondary exhibitionism, latently homosexual trends in identification with the mother, severe castration anxiety and compensatory assertiveness, and persistence of infantile misconstructions of birth, intercourse, and excretion” (136). Anschauung tries to validate his findings with word associations, comparisons of works, and Christopher Robin’s actions within the stories, unfortunately, comparing a jar of honey with the female genitals and a Heffalump trap as an “obvious” sign of the fear of castration is just too far fetched. This essay, however unbelievable, was written in a very professional and analytical tone, as if Anschauung was trying to lure Milne in as a patient. Anschauung also tries to convince the reader that Milne’s problems are not uncommon to man and in fact everyone has these problems to some state, it is just not as noticeable as it is with Milne, which might lure in readers as clients. As stated before, Milne’s purpose of writing these stories were most-likely an innocent whim to capture the creativeness of his stories and his son’s imagination. It is seriously doubted that any subconscious purposes of exhibitionism and a repression of animal-phobia is evident, and if there is concrete evidence, it is definatly not believable.

Of the three essays compared and contrasted, it can be seen that all are similar but different in each aspect. In believability, It would be determined that “Poisoned Paradise” would be first, “Another Book to Cross Off Your List” would be last, and “A. A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon Complex” to be in the middle. They all have some type of Freudian or Archetypal approaches and all but Anschauung’s essay are written in a New Critic approach, Anschauung’s is more of the Traditional Approach. The one thing that all of the fictional authors presented here from The Pooh Perplex is that the book Winnie-The-Pooh is one not for children and have underlying meanings of a sexual or non-moral manner.